This review aims to describe the prevalence of empathy, empowerment and patient-centred clinical care experienced by patients in complementary medicine (CM) consultations.
A systematic review was undertaken of original research exploring patient perceptions of CM clinical care. Ten databases were searched: Alt HealthWatch, AMED, CINAHL Plus, MEDLINE Complete, Cochrane Library, PubMed, Proquest Medical Collection, PsycInfo, Social Sciences Citation Index and Psychology Collection. Studies were included which reported patient perceptions of consultation with CM practitioners and were excluded where experimental methods controlled the nature of consultation processes.
Findings of included studies (n=34) were categorised under the a priori themes of empathy, empowerment and patient-centred care. This produced a substantial pool of qualitative data detailing patient-reported experiences which consistently confirmed occurrence of these themes in CM consultation. Quantitative data was correlative, yet was insufficient to definitively describe prevalence of such experiences.
While it is evident that CM consultations provide a patient experience of empathy, empowerment and patient-centredness, further research is warranted to quantify this experience before it can be defined as characteristic of CM clinical care.
This review draws attention to the potential role of CM as a resource for patients' psychosocial health needs.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 6. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 28 August 2017.
All research outputs
#8,993,029
of 33,957,889 outputs
Outputs from Patient Education & Counseling
#1,625
of 4,768 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#93,731
of 332,381 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Patient Education & Counseling
#17
of 55 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 33,957,889 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 73rd percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 4,768 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 7.6. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 65% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 332,381 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 71% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 55 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 69% of its contemporaries.
